


Reckoning

by FroldGapp



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Galra Keith (Voltron), Hurt/Comfort, Keith (Voltron) Whump, Kuron is Shiro (Voltron)'s Clone, M/M, Pining Keith (Voltron), Pining Shiro (Voltron), Pre-Kerberos Mission, SHEITH - Freeform, Sheith Secret Santa 2017, Socially Awkward Keith (Voltron), sheithmas, working class keith
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-31
Updated: 2017-12-31
Packaged: 2019-02-25 18:14:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13218234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FroldGapp/pseuds/FroldGapp
Summary: Despite everything – despite the pain and scars, despite the war – they can make a future for themselves.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GeniusCactus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GeniusCactus/gifts).



> My Sheith Secret Santa piece for geniuskaktus.
> 
> Thanks to the Sheith Secret Santa gang for organising this wonderful event and for all the contributors. So much amazing work– wow!
> 
> British English so ' not ", etc.
> 
> Thanks so much to blackcatbone for beta-ing!

Keith is so tired by the time he gets back to the Garrison, it feels like his middle is going to fall out of him. His hands are raw with soap powder and steaming water, but the brown paper envelope burning a hole in the back of his pocket is enough to keep his chin up and a skip in his step. The hotel work is hard, but invaluable. No amount of steaming or folding or scrubbing or emptying the trash can take the shine off having his own money. It keeps him in well-shined boots. It keeps him in the Garrison.

‘Hey, hotshot!’ a cadet with short-cropped hair greets him at the double doors of the entrance. His eyes drift down to Keith’s brown smock and wide-legged, impressively ugly trousers. ‘Nice threads.’

Keith offers his middle finger and keeps walking. The student calls insults after him and Keith smiles to himself when the door swings back and earns a surprised yelp from the asshole. Weaving through students with the steady padding of a desert animal within sniffing distance of an oasis, he does his best to go unnoticed: head down, shoulders up. An occasional body connects with his, but he continues despite the yowls of indignation. _Watch where you’re going, creep!_ He is unliked in the Garrison in the most carnal sense and with the kind of vitriol he once thought the reserve of high school movies. Whether it’s his background, his scores, his attitude, his face, or a combination of everything, he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know and he doesn’t care. Like every previous school and foster home from sea to shining sea, his mission is to fly under the radar as much as possible. It’s not so hard; he really is a talented pilot.

It’s just as he’s approaching the stairs to the third year dormitory that a solid arm blocks his path.

‘That’s not a Garrison uniform.’

‘Huh?’ Keith mumbles into the crisp olive sleeve currently pressed against his mouth. He steps back and observes the mountain of a junior officer blocking his path; more _obstructor_ than _instructor._

A thick finger prods his chest. ‘Wearing a non-Garrison issued uniform on school property is a suspendable offence,’ the man leans forward to read his hotel uniform name tag, ‘Keith Kogane.’

He knows this man in the same sense he knows Elvis Presley and Cleopatra: Takashi Shirogane, son of Naka Shirogane, widely regarded as the best pilot of her generation. If there’s one thing Keith gives not even two shits about, it’s lineage. He does, however, care about getting away from the staring eyes of the already-amassing students, so he concedes a nod and moves to continue.

The arm stops him again. ‘This.’ Fingers pull at the shoulder of his smock. ‘Is not a Garrison uniform.’

Keith folds his arms and tries to school his face into an expression that doesn’t scream, _you’re an idiot_. ‘Are you sure you’re a pilot and not a detective?’ He waits a confident beat before adding, ‘Sir.’

Takashi Shirogane smiles at him as though something deep within the world has slotted into place. He is utterly, infuriatingly unfazed. ‘They said you’d be trouble,’ he says, pulling his arm away from the wall to offer his hand. ‘Takashi Shirogane.’ His smile brightens to that of a labrador who’s just fetched the paper.

Keith steps past him. ‘I know,’ he says. ‘And I don’t care.’

OoO

‘I was so cruel to you when we first met.’

Black’s interior glows a muted purple. It is quiet but watchful, Keith can tell. So unlike Red, who prodded and probed and flared at every hurt. This should have been proof alone that Keith was unsuitable to pilot the Black Lion.

‘I didn’t want you to like me. It scared me. _You_ scared me.’ He fingers the edge of the dashboard and feels Black turn over in his mind like a languid panther. ‘But there’s so much more to be scared of. I know that now. That…’ He reaches for a word his brain is reluctant to supply. ‘P-person isn’t you, and I don’t know how to… How can I…?’ He shakes his head and sighs. ‘Where are you, Shiro?’ Black rumbles deeply and the vibrations run the length of his spine. ‘I don’t know what to do.’

The hangar channel opens up, broadcasting the sound of someone knocking outside. Keith pats Black’s dashboard once and it lowers its head to the ground. He eases himself out of the pilot’s seat, his back popping so loudly he flinches. He makes his way tiredly towards the ramp.

Lance is there, arms folded and foot tapping. ‘I tried to hail you,’ he says.

Keith shrugs. ‘I was busy.’

Lance scrutinises him, then Black. ‘Busy,’ he says. ‘Sure.’

Sighing loudly, Keith mirrors Lance’s closed-off stance. ‘What do you want?’

‘Not me,’ he answers. ‘Your buddy, Kolivan. Says you’re needed for a run and to meet him in full Marmora armour in the rear hangar. Try to remember to leave your comms open this time, yeah? You know, be available. Leader.’ He turns and stalks off with a lazy wave. Keith blinks after him before uttering a small, uncertain, ‘Yeah.’

OoO

The gymnasium rings with the unmistakable slap of flesh on plastic as Keith’s back slams into the mat. The air is knocked out of him in a single _whoosh!_ and with Shiro’s forearm pressed against his throat, he’s unable to draw another breath. He taps the mat desperately and surrenders the bout.

Shiro leans back on his heels, grinning like a Chesire cat. His sharp granite eyes consider Keith keenly as he struggles to recover. ‘Man, I’d love to make that sound my ringtone.’

‘What, the sound of my spine shattering?’ Keith gasps, then coughs wetly onto the mat.

Shiro shrugs and offers his hand. ‘Sure.’ Goddamn his smile.

In the canteen, they refuel on horrible canteen food. Keith takes Shiro’s pork cutlet, Shiro takes Keith’s beans.

‘I’ve never met someone so passionately opposed to baked beans before,’ says Shiro, shovelling another spoonful into his mouth. ‘Besides, _ain’t you from round these here parts.’_

Keith groans and stabs three potatoes off Shiro’s plate. He pushes them into his mouth one by one and speaks past chewing. ‘Where’s a tumbleweed when you need one?’

Shiro chuckles and nudges Keith’s knee with his own under the table. ‘You’re so fussy,’ he says, then tilts his head, at once concerned. ‘Keith?’

He is concerned because Keith has stopped breathing and feels as though his eyes are about to tumble free of his head. Masticated potato is wedged in his throat mid-swallow. Keith has stopped breathing because Shiro’s knee still rests against his own and suddenly, _shockingly_ his stomach pools with heat, his spine sparking like a Tesla coil. Fuck. 

‘Keith?’ 

‘I... uh,’ Keith responds eloquently. ‘Fuck beans.’ He grimaces and swallows hard. He sputters a piece of rogue potato into his palm and wipes it on his leg. 

Shiro cocks his head, eyes crinkling. Keith’s stomach somersaults as though he’s back in high-G training. If any more charge passes through Shiro’s knee to his own, his head is going to detonate. His cheeks are on fire, the knife and fork have become greasy in his hands.

‘Fuck beans,’ says Keith again in a reedy, painfully panicked voice. He shrugs like a guy who’s just taken a dump on the carpet and is trying to play it cool, then again, says, ‘Fuck beans.’ He doesn’t know why he can’t stop saying ‘Fuck beans’. He’s said it so much now it sounds like a single word: _Fuckbeans._ Somebody save him. 

Shiro raises his glass, laughing. ‘Fuck beans,’ he says.

OoO

It’s hours before he can stop throwing up. When he closes his eyes, all he sees is yellow: the sickly glow of quintessence and formaldehyde.

‘I am sorry, Keith,’ Kolivan had said as they stood amongst the rows and rows of jars full of stringy muscle and half-formed faces; eyes that floated in gelatinous clumps like frogspawn and teeth jutting from malformed torsos. ‘We thought you needed to see in order to believe the full horror of the empire and the danger you are all in.’

He had never felt so animal as when he’d torn the lab to pieces. He’d screamed and sobbed, wrenched meat from bone and bone from socket. Kolivan had ordered calm: _We must preserve the evidence, paladin!_ But nobody could understand the Armageddons Keith would have brought about to destroy every abject insult that hung suspended in the eerie golden glow of quintessence. They had taken the purest soul in the universe and made a mockery of it. It was unforgivable. 

Now, on the jump back to the Castle, Kolivan is contemplative, kind even. He sits opposite Keith, large hands dangling between his legs. 

‘You knew,’ he says.

Keith nods. ‘I suspected. I couldn’t have imagined... _that_.’

‘Do you have a plan of action?’ He looks tired but cautious. Keith realises dully that he frightens Kolivan; that he’s a child with the wellbeing of the universe balanced in his trembling hands. ‘Paladin?’ Kolivan prompts.

‘Yeah,’ Keith whispers. ‘Yeah.’

Kolivan waits for him to continue, mouth drawn in a grim frown.

‘I’m going to kill him.’ Kolivan inhales but says nothing. The castle appears in the near distance. ‘I’m going to kill him and bring back Shiro.’

OoO

There are too many people. There are always too many people, of course, but today there are _way_ too many people.

‘Stop fidgeting,’ Shiro says, elbowing Keith. He grumbles and shoves his hands in his pockets, searching for a coin he can at least turn over secretly between his fingers to ease the panic bubbling in his chest. _Two years. Two years. Two years. Miles and miles of space._  

‘Still fidgeting,’ Shiro mock-admonishes, and nudges Keith once. A camera flashes and Keith flinches back like a startled cat. Shiro’s body is solid against his. He gives Keith’s waist a little squeeze.

‘Two minutes!’ an officer calls.

To their right, the Holts start to embrace. The little sister, Katie, begins to cry. 

Shiro turns to Keith and takes him by his narrow shoulders. ‘This is it,’ he says.

Keith nods dumbly. He feels as though he’s going to die. He tries to hide it with a smile, but only manages a whimper.

‘Keith,’ says Shiro, bending at the waist so that they’re eye to eye. ‘This is just the beginning. There’s so much future ahead of us.’

 _Us. Us. Us. Us. Us._ God, grant Keith the confidence to use words like _us_ and _we_ and _future_ with Takashi Shirogane. Instead he says, ‘Okay.’ He’s shaking. Shiro must feel it because he begins rubbing small circles on Keith’s upper arms with his thumbs.

‘Keith…’

‘Crew to positions! Hey, short-stack. Get to the bus. Now.’

‘Shiro, I…’

A burly officer approaches and taps Shiro on the shoulder. ‘The shuttle isn’t going to fly itself, Shirogane.’

Shiro rolls his eyes but nods nonetheless. Steam hisses across the launchpad. The small crowd of loved ones, ground crew and press start drifting towards the buses that will bring them back to the viewing platform.

With a purse of his lips, Shiro lifts one hand from Keith’s shoulder and pinches his nose between his fingers. ‘I’ll be seeing that grumpy face in my sleep. I’ll name a constellation after it. “The Great Pout.”’ He pulls Keith’s face one way and then the other.

Keith wants to make a smart retort. He even considers punching Shiro like an old comrade in arms might do, but he can do neither; he just stands there with his nose clamped between Shiro’s thick fingers.

Then the hand is gone and Shiro is saying ‘goodbye’ and somebody is coaxing him backwards by the shoulders. There is steam and noise and waving Holts and the caramel glint of a setting sun on gleaming heatproof plating.

He is a boy filled with ‘goodbyes’. Farewells were his nursemaid, closing doors his governor. But when it counted the most, he could say nothing at all. He starts with a gasp. He didn’t say ‘bye’. He didn’t say ‘bye’! He’s sprinting before he knows it, feet pounding off swiftly cooling concrete as the sun shimmers beneath the horizon.

‘Shiro!’ he calls, sliding under the outstretched arm of a steward. Shiro turns and bursts out laughing at the sheer inevitability of a desperate Keith salmon-dodging past guards to reach him. _Fucking Kogane,_ someone roars, which has Shiro laughing even more.

Keith leaps and connects with Shiro, who _whumpfs!_ with the impact. The suit is a bastard, but Keith finds the warm space between Shiro’s jawline and ear and presses his mouth against it.

‘Please come back,’ he says, pulling himself deeper into the embrace until Shiro’s suit threatens to give.

Shiro says nothing, just holds him until a stranger’s hands pull them apart.


	2. Chapter 2

They found the body already rapidly decomposing on Black’s hangar floor. The clone – as they now know it – had been run through with the black bayard, but not before he branded Keith half blind with his galra arm. The Black Lion, to save its nascent paladin, had phased him through the astral plane and into Shiro’s startled arms. A cord of light, bright as a supernova, had led him back to the hangar and his other self’s corpse. Still in his arms, Keith screamed his throat raw and damned the infinity of the cosmos to Hell. He was too far gone to know what he’d accomplished, or in whose arms he lay dying. When they placed Keith in the pod, it was with the bone-tired acceptance that he might not wake up again; that this was one fight too many for the Red Paladin of Voltron and Guardian of Fire.

He survived though, because that’s just what Keith Kogane did.

OoO

The door hisses open. The room is quiet save for Keith’s steady breathing. Altean medical apparatus isn’t nearly as bulky or invasive as that found in Earth hospitals, but still, the fine cables running from Keith’s nose, across his temples, and from the back of his wrist are jarring enough to stop Shiro at the door. The vivid, violent scar that mars the left side of Keith’s face is something else entirely. A flash of righteous anger washes white-hot across Shiro’s cheeks. He clenches his galra fist so tightly the gears within whirr. He needs to collect himself. Keith needs calm. He needs care and peace and, God, he needs rest. Years– millennia of rest.

‘Hey,’ Shiro says, and moves towards the side of the bed. Hidden readers beep and bring up the chalky blue lights slightly. A little cup drops out of a holder and is promptly filled with water. Shiro ignores it and takes Keith’s hand instead. Fine-boned piano fingers rest cool and dry in Shiro’s left palm. Keith Kogane: the master of contradictions. Delicately framed but steeled with wiry strength. Quiet but endlessly expressive. Unloved and neglected for so many years, but owner of a heart big enough to fit the entire universe and all who live in it. Fire in his veins, grit in his belly. Sword-wielder and bird-lover, fighter pilot and gentle dreamer. His Keith. His world.

‘I saw us. Wherever Black sent me, I saw us.’ The softest of breaths warms the heel of his palm as he runs the thumb of his right hand over Keith’s brow. ‘We were happy, Keith. We can be happy. I saw it. I _saw_ it. It’s only waiting for us to make it.’

Keith sleeps on. The machines surrounding him continue to hum quietly. After the pod, Coran said, all they could do was wait for Keith to do the rest. Keith was the first of his kind, afterall, and Altean tech could only do so much. Shiro closes his eyes and remembers the _other them_ he saw between the folds of space. Keith, broader in the shoulders but still whippet-waisted, bending to study the violet petals of some alien flower. Keith, naked and baked by two suns as he lies outstretched by a river that sings with tumbling pebbles and flitting, iridescent fish-birds. Keith in his arms, crying not because they lost but because they _won._

‘We have a life waiting for us, Keith. I know it’s true, because… Because of this.’ Shiro’s hand perfectly covers the angry scar his double wrought. He swallows, reminding himself it wasn’t him. ‘I need you to wake up, Keith,’ Shiro says. ‘I need you to wake up. Come back to me, Keith. Come back so I can make that life for us. It’s there. It’s _there._ ’

Shiro looks to the ceiling as the first tear rolls free. He closes his eyes against the sudden grief that threatens to swallow him whole, the lump in his throat a hot coal. ‘Please,’ he begs messily, soaking his own chin with spit. _‘Please_.’

‘Shiro?’

A single violet eye blinks up at him, lashes clumped together with sleep. Dozily, Keith reaches up and lays his fingers across Shiro’s. He doesn’t flinch away from the hand so like the one that scalded him half-blind, just closes his eyes and pulls in a luxurious breath. His fingers scout out the lines of Shiro’s galra hand.

‘Keith,’ Shiro says, disbelieving. ‘You’re a–ow!’ His nose is pinched between the middle and forefinger of Keith’s right hand and he’s pulled downward with no small amount of strength.

Keith’s eye reopens, his left still obscured by Shiro’s palm. ‘Where’d you go?’ asks Keith, drowsily. Crossly.

Shiro laughs and speaks like a kid pretending to be an airline pilot through blocked nostrils. ‘You were there. You saved me from there. Somewhere only Black knows.’

That doesn’t seem to satisfy Keith, as he yanks Shiro closer still. ‘I looked for you.’ His eye is searching, his pupil blown so that only the barest disc of violet remains. Tears form. His smooth chin puckers with emotion. ‘I looked for you.’

Shiro removes his galra hand, extracts himself from the vice of Keith’s fingers and smooths back the great shock of his hair. It’s longer now; a mane of jet. His left eye is a pale gleam of yellow, iris-less and solid. Forever changed.

‘And you found me, Keith. You saved my life. You saved Voltron. Maybe the universe.’

Keith eyes him warily, then: ‘I knew it wasn’t you.’

‘I know.’

‘But I wanted it to be you. For them. For me.’ A tear slips down the side of his cheek. Shiro catches it with the pad of one finger.

‘I know,’ he says. ‘He was programmed to dismantle Voltron from within, Keith. He would have killed you all, opened the path for Haggar and the Empire. You saved my life. You were brave to face him.’ He tuts fondly, wiping away another tear. ‘So brave.’

‘I’m not brave,’ he whispers.

‘More than you’ll ever know,’ answers Shiro and edges closer so his hip lies flat against Keith’s side.

Keith hums, unconvinced and lets his eye roam around the quiet recovery room. Shiro watches him, adjusting his blankets in small, sure movements.

At last, Keith closes his eyes and seems to draw on some deeply-welled strength within himself. When he opens them again, the right eye is clear and bright. ‘Shiro?’

‘Mm?’

‘Is what you said true? Is there something better waiting for us?’

Despite everything – despite the battles and the losses, the scars and the tears – Keith’s face is still as earnest, timid and as hopeful as it was on the launchpad all that trauma ago.

Shiro runs his fingers around the shell of Keith’s ear. His answer is a kiss and whispered promise-prayer. ‘Yes.’

OoO

Earth feels different when you’ve won a war and defeated an empire. Outside, the world is exploding into a New Year in a shower of fireworks and champagne. But while Allura, Coran, Lance, Pidge and Hunk eat and drink their way through every morsel a grateful Earth can offer them, some heroes, it transpires, prefer to nap.

Shiro awakens to the damp wash of breath across his collarbone. Cracking open one eye, he is utterly unsurprised to see a sleeping Keith draped bonelessly across him. No matter how and where they fall asleep, Keith will somehow manage to wriggle his way onto an oblivious Shiro. As always, Keith sleeps with his mouth open and eyes half-lidded. In his right hand, he still clutches a half-eaten sausage roll. The bed is full of crumbs. His hair is a thicket, his eyebrows drawn together in some unknown dream. He is, Shiro muses, just about the most curious creature he’s ever encountered. This includes the prehistoric, the deep-sea and the extraterrestrial.

‘Hey,’ Shiro says, flicking Keith’s ear. He’s rewarded with a moan that empties a mouthful of slobber onto his chest. Keith stretches until seemingly every part of his body pops noisily. The flat plane of his stomach is warm against Shiro’s own and long toes scratch the length of Shiro’s shin. Shiro extracts one arm to remove the gluey roll from Keith’s fingers.

‘I planned on finishing that,’ Keith grouses, grasping for it like a weak kitten.

Shiro chuckles and rolls Keith off him until they’re side by side. ‘Nothing else you can think of now that we’ve got one less evil empire to deal with? No special way to ring in the New Year?’

Keith scrunches his face up to suppress a yawn, the scar an ever-fainter shadow as the years wear on. The eye, however, is well beyond saving, but Keith remains stoically dismissive of any kind of replacement. The sliver of gold sharpens his features to iconographic beauty.

‘Can’t think of a single thing,’ he replies at last, threading the fingers of one hand into Shiro’s hair and pulling him into a kiss that speaks of sunsets, space and a future there for the making.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come shout at me! https://froldgapp.tumblr.com

**Author's Note:**

> As always, come shout with me: https://froldgapp.tumblr.com
> 
> I tried to squidge in as many prompts as possible, GK! Hope it satisfies some one of them!:
> 
> Something happens to Shiro and Keith has to take over the black lion. Again.
> 
> Keith finds the ‘real Shiro’ during his BOM stuff. Has he suspected something is up the entire time? Does it catch him by surprise?
> 
> Pre-Kerberos Sheith -- What was their relationship? What was their first hug like? 
> 
> How about some Alternate Realities!


End file.
